Black Forest Cake and my second award !!

Wooow!! Is this great or what?? Am I dreaming? Two awards in two days!? Yes, it happened. Trupti presented with me my very first award yesterday and now Ranji of Ranji's Kitchen corner has thought of me when she was passing on the "You make my day" award! Thanks a lot Ranji, I am truly honored and I really appreciate your gesture! It has really made all of my days to come!

I would like to pass it on to:

Trupti of Recipe Center
Swati of Chatkhor
Sunita of Sunita's World
Sangeeth of Art of Cooking Indian Food

And to the rest of you, you all make my day by visiting my blog, leaving comments and encouraging me to continue! So on that happy note, I will share the recipe for a sweet and sinful black forest cake.

I made this for a get-together with JM's collegues. This is basically a devil's food cake with light cherry filling and whipped cream topping. We had a great time at JP & NB's place. If you guys are reading this, I just wanted to let you two know that you were fantastic hosts and we had a great time getting to know the three of you (and others too!!). And lil 'V' is just adorable!! He is such a well-behaved boy and a good host too! When it was time for us to leave (almost midnight!!) my lil girl didnt want to leave and she wanted to continue partying!! I wonder if she even knows what a party is! Anyways, we had a blast at their place. I hope they enjoyed having us over.

Coming back to the cake, once again, I made this with a cake mix ( I am sorry, I tend to take the easy way out when I am making the cake for somebody else. I want to make sure I wont make any mistakes!).

Recipe:

Devil's food cake mix - 1 package
Eggs - 3, as on the package
Vegetable oil - as on the package
Water - as on the package

Lite cherry pie filling - 1 can
Whipped cream/ Cool whip - 1 tub (8 0z)
Maraschino cherries with stems - 8

Method:

I mixed the Devil's food cake according to package instructions.

To prepare the pan, I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and just greased and floured the sides.

The cake was baked in an 8" by 3" round cake pan, so it took about 55 minutes to bake.

Once the cake was cooled, I cut off the dome of the cake and reserved it.

Then cut the remaining cake into two equal layers.

Open the can for the cherry pie filling and reserve the juice.

On the cake board, I placed the upper layer of the cake.

Pipe a dam of whipped cream around the rim of the cake layer so that the filling does not escape to the outer surface.

The two cake layers were soaked using the reserve cherry pie filling juice.

Filled the surface within the whipped cream dam with a uniform layer of the cherry pie filling.

Placed the second cake layer on top.

Generously frosted the sides and top of the two layered cake with cool whip/ whipped cream.

Smoothed it out as fine as possible.

Crumbled the soft parts (not the harder crust) of the cake dome reserved finely using my hands.

Stuck the cake crumbs to the sides of the cake as uniformly as possible.

Topped the cake with eight swirls of whipped cream at uniform intervals.

Placed a cherry with stem one each of the swirl.

Finally, decorated the centre with chocolate curls/shavings or finely grated chocolate.


Tips:

1. To soak the cake layers, you can thin down the juice with water and then sweeten it to your liking. Use it to moisten the cake. I actually did not soak the layers through, but used just a little bit of juice to add a wee bit of moisture to the cake.
2. I thinned down the juice with a tablespoon or so of water and added just a teaspoon of sugar because the tart cherry filling within the sweet cake would be just right!
3. To decorate the center, place a cookie cutter ( I used a crinkled round cutter) and then spread the grated chocolate inside the cutter to from a design.

Fun Fact:

Did you know that the actual German version of black forest cake uses Kirschwasser (alcohol) whereas the American cakes are prepared without any alcohol? (wiki)

I am sending this post as my entry to Great Cooks Community's first food event: Kid Friendly Cooking. I have no doubt that all kids would love to eat this tasty and creamy black forest cake and this is definitely a kid friendly recipe! Dont forget to be a part of the Great Cooks Community where members can get to know each other, share recipes and tips!